How do I make a form button with a tooltip visible to a reader?

Report · Jul 14, 2016

I’m preparing PDFs of old scientific literature, much of it taxonomic, and therefore densely populated with names of species, genera, geographic places, etc.

Over time, many of these names have changed. I want to use the Tooltip function to add a note to names that have been changed. I have no problem creating the tooltips — the problem is how to let a reader know that a tooltip is linked to text!

The tooltip button has to be transparent in order to display the underlying text; the problem is that because it’s transparent, a reader cannot know that there IS a tooltip attached to the text.

In the Mac program PDF Expert there is an option to highlight form fields, so all text blocks that have tooltips attached are immediately obvious; however, I cannot find any similar option in Acrobat DC. One doesn't want to waste a reader's time by asking them to run the mouse over all the text just in case there is a hidden tooltip!

And is there any way to eliminate the slight delay that Acrobat imposes before a tooltip is shown? It would be nice if the display could be made immediate on a mouse rollover.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Report · Jul 14, 2016

Are you placing text fields or buttons? In any case, you can set the background color to transparent and the border style to underline to provide a visual clue, and set the buttons to visible but doesn't print and the behavior to None.

Report · Jul 14, 2016

Hi George:

Thanks for the quick response; much appreciated. I’ve been attaching the tooltip text to buttons.

Your’s is a great suggestion … I hadn’t figured out that I could set the border to just an underline, so I think that will work well … I can just attach an annotation to the first page of a PDF and alert readers that text underlined in a specific color will indicate the presence of a tooltip.

Thanks so much … I now have a workable solution!

The PDF Expert approach is perhaps a little more elegant .. you can highlight form fields with a single preference setting and the entire field is highlighted (here a button surrounding the text “buttons”):

Your suggestion about "Edit > Preferences > Forms > Show border hover color for fields” is completely inoperative in the latest release of DC on the Mac … I had expected it to do what the pref setting in PDF Expert does, but it does nothing for a button field.

Cheers!

--

Steve Smith

Report · Jul 14, 2016

By the way, the user can select the following user preference to display field highlighting: Edit > Preferences > Forms > Show border hover color for fields

Despite that confusing description, it does control the display of field highlighting. You can also set up a button to allow the user to toggle it:

// Mouse Up script for a button

app.runtimeHighlight = !app.runtimeHighlight;

In versions of Acrobat/Reader prior to DC, a toolbar appeared that allowed the user to toggle field highlighting. But if you use buttons, which is what I'd suggest, then you don't need to bother with this.